


Promises to Keep

by buckysbears (DrZebra)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, Back burning, Canon Compliant, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Pre-Relationship, actual research went into this so i hope its accurate, but god i couldnt help myself, i know everyone and their mom has written a back burning fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 22:50:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15205217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrZebra/pseuds/buckysbears
Summary: He thinks his shame and guilt and anguish can save him from inflicting these wounds. She knows that he doesn't want her to be just another person he's hurt.But he made her a promise.





	Promises to Keep

**Author's Note:**

> much love to my beta agentcalliope who pushed me to write this. couldnt have done it without you 
> 
> *****cw: there is a brief scene of vomiting for those who are squeamish to that

She tenses her teeth against the fabric. It’s rough against her tongue, and that plus the anxiety is making her queasy. She can’t swallow properly with the towel in her mouth, and she chokes down the saliva that’s gathered near her throat. She’s doing her best to keep her shivering contained, knowing that she’s going to be wishing back for this moment in just a few minutes.

Still, the snap doesn’t come, and with each moment that it doesn’t, her nerves clench harder, her muscles tighten, and the anger grows steady in her chest.

Roy is silent behind her.

Finally, she rips the towel free from her teeth, squeezing it between her hands. “Sir,” is all she can manage to say.

“I—” Roy sounds like he’s gagging on the word. “I can’t- Hawkeye, I’m sorry, I can’t—”

His hand flies to cover his gaze when she stands and turns around.

She refrains from rolling her eyes. Barely. The towel rises to cover her chest. “I feel like we’re past modesty at this point, sir.”

The hand doesn’t drop.

“I’m covered.”

The drop is slow, and still, he stares down at the ground. He looks angry. Absolutely furious. Riza doesn’t know if it’s at her, for asking him to do this, or himself, for not being able to.

“Officer Hawkeye,” he says, and his voice is remarkably even for the tremor in his jaw. “I know … I know I promised to do this. I don’t like breaking my promises. But there are some horrors that even I can’t unleash. Not on you.”

“Sir,” she says, and waits for him to look up at her. “Do you care about me?”

He looks a little startled at the question. “Of course I d—”

“Then I don’t understand why you hesitate.”

His lips pull in a snarl. “I hesitate because I care—”

“No,” she says, and he stops short. “No. If you cared, you’d never hesitate to lift a great burden from me.”

His lips smooth. He looks away. They’ve drawn the blinds, but he still looks to the window. The house is quiet around them. The owners won’t be back for a week, and by then they’ll have washed the evidence away. The chill in the air seeps down to her bones. Riza likes the cold. Or—more to the point—she prefers it to the heat. Since Ishval, she’s blown most of her meager paycheck keeping her apartment as cold as possible. Otherwise, she’ll wake sweating, sure she’s heard gunshots in the distance.

“Hawkeye,” he says. His eyes close. “Did you know that in all my years training, mastering the practice of flame alchemy, I’ve never burned myself? Learning to aim, leaning to control radius—not once. Not once have I burned myself. Do you know why?”

He opens his eyes, and they turn to glare into her.

“Why, sir?”

His face sets in a bitter smile. “Because I’m afraid of the pain. I’m afraid of how much it’ll hurt. That’s why. Fire is ugly. Fire burns and scars. It destroys. I’m afraid of letting it touch me.”

She’s not sure what to say to that, so she’s silent.

He shakes his head, and looks away again. She’s not sure why he keeps looking towards the window. Something to escape through, she supposes, though she’s blocked his exit.

“And now I’m supposed to … let it touch you. Let it hurt you. I don’t think I can … No—I refuse.”

There’s a silence, and Riza’s hands clench. It angers her— _infuriates_ her—that he thinks he can choose what’s best for her. That he thinks he’s being noble. _Kind_.

“Sir,” she snaps, and by the way his head whips back to her the word must have slapped with as much force as she meant it to. “You know the horrors I’ve seen in Ishval. You know because you were there. Because you were the one inflicting them.” She can see the guilt start to grow in his eyes, but she plows on. “And it was because of my father’s research that you were able to inflict those horrors. Because … Because of _me._ Because _I_ chose to show it to you, share it with you, people are dead. _Children_ , sir. People who are never going to get their lives back. And I have to carry that for the rest of my life. But I don’t have to carry this. The key to the destruction. The promise that one day, it’ll happen again. Don’t make me carry that.”

Roy growls, gloved hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Don’t you dare,” he says, voice low. “Don’t you _dare_ blame yourself for _my_ actions in Ishval. Don’t—” He growls again, and then his hand whips up to point at her. “Those were _my actions_ , Officer! Do you hear me? Those were _mine_ and mine alone!”

Her hands clench on the towel. There’s some sort of anguish lighting her chest, and she’s not sure if it’s anger or shame or just plain sadness. Her eyes sting, but she refuses to let it turn into tears. She grits her teeth against the shaking of her jaw.

“I can’t …” She clenches her jaw again, an involuntary shiver wracking through her. “I want you to listen to me. I can’t handle being a victim. Okay? Call it a flaw of character, call it whatever you want. But I can’t. I can’t be a victim in all this. So let me be complicit.” She holds his gaze as she says, “Let me have that much control.”

She can see the break in the tilt of his eyes. That acknowledgement that he sees her now—that she’s just as fucked as he is, as the rest of them are. That everything that’s happened to her has been just as real as everything that’s happened to him. That her demons are just as vicious, living just under her skin, calling her body home. All the death she’s caused, she carries across her back. Their souls scream inside her.

“Sir,” she says, and this time she lets her voice go soft. He doesn’t respond, but he’s watching her attentively. “You said your fire is ugly? It destroys?”

Almost imperceptivity, he nods.

“This time, let it heal. Let it be the thing that frees me.”

“Hawkeye,” he whispers.

“This is what I want, sir.” She stares back as his eyes rake over her face. “And you made me a promise.”

His eyes still. He blinks. And then, though it’s not at all what she’s expecting, he throws back his head and laughs. She starts a little bit, watching the force of it ride along his shoulders. He takes a moment to collect himself.

“Officer Hawkeye,” he says, still sniggering, “you have a really morbid way of giving pep talks.”

She pushes out a grim smile. “Morbid times, sir.”

“They are,” he agrees, his grin taming. “But we’ll change that.”

Her smile turns a touch more genuine. She nods.

He nods back. “Well. We should probably do this before I chicken out again, yeah?”

She can’t help the little chuckle that spills out of her. It feels out of place next to the goosebumps on her arms. “That’s advisable, yes.”

She sits back down on their makeshift setup. She’s spread a plastic tarp on the ground beneath them, protecting the wooden floors from any sort of fluids that might’ve befallen them without it. Her seat is a collapsible examination table (she might have nicked it from one of the military’s practitioners when no one was looking). The cold metal isn’t helping her shivers, but it’s going to be the easiest thing to clean. In front of her are two of the dining room chairs—she just needed something to hold on to. To keep her steady.

A shudder threatens to run from the base of her spine up through her neck, but she holds it in. The towel she bunches up enough that it’ll fill most of her mouth, stopping any potential screams, and stop her from biting off her tongue should the urge strike her, and places it in her mouth. She leans forward to grab onto the back of the two chairs.

“Ready?” Roy asks.

She gives a sharp nod.

She clenches her hands.

Her toes curl.

She hears the snap.

Later, she’ll remember how completely and utterly painless it was.

At first.

 

He isn’t expecting the silence.

She flinches away from him, back jolting, but soon steadies herself. She doesn’t scream. She doesn’t even whimper. Roy wonders if there’s something wrong with his ears, if maybe he doesn’t want to hear it so bad that he doesn’t, but he can hear the _whoosh_ of the fire as it crackles over her back. He can hear the chairs creak as she places more weight on them. He can hear his heart thudding faster and faster in his chest, pounding in his eardrums.

The fire dissipates. He almost gags looking at what he’s done.

Her flesh is pink and shiny like raw meat, splotched with areas of crisp, black skin and crisscrossed with veins. Around the edges of the damage, the skin that’s left is starkly pale. In a few places, blood begins to drip down her back.

His hands shake, and he rips the gloves away. They fall to the floor. He bites his tongue, but he won’t close his eyes. He needs to see what he’s done.

She still hasn’t made a sound. Hasn’t moved. And then a shiver wracks through her. She freezes. A whimper crawls out from behind the towel.

He dashes around to the other side of the table, falling to his knees between the two chairs. She said earlier that they were past modesty, but that’s not even on his mind as he stares up at her.

“Hawkeye,” he says, his voice shaking. “Hawkeye, say something.”

Her eyes are closed. She doesn’t move. Slowly, he reaches up and takes the towel from between her teeth.

“Hawkeye,” he whispers.

Her teeth clank together as her jaw shakes. He’s not sure if she can hear him. Her eyes still shut, one tear escapes and slips down her cheek.

Roy has seen a lot. He’s been through a lot. But this might be the scariest moment of his life, he thinks.

He reaches out a hand, then stops. It was his hands that did this. It feels wrong letting them touch her. He wants to never touch anyone ever again.

He lays a hand on her knee.

“Riza,” he says.

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. One hand unclasps from the chair, and goes to reach down for his. Before she makes it far, she cries out.

Roy’s heart clenches painfully, and he picks up his hand to steer hers back to the chair. “Don’t try to move. I just want to know if you can hear me.”

Minutely, she nods.

“Okay.” He blows out a breath. “Okay, that’s good. I’m going to need to clean the blood off and wrap it. Are you going to be able to tell me if it gets too painful?”

“Mhmm,” she hums, and it comes out higher than Roy thinks she meant it to.

Roy swallows. “Do you need a few minutes first?”

Her eyes shut tighter, and her nods are quick.

“Okay.” He squeezes her hand. “Couple minutes.”

He thinks he should remove his hand from hers, but he doesn’t. He listens to her breathe, slow and heavy inhales, pauses, shaky exhales. Another shiver wracks through her, and though she grits her teeth, a whine escapes.

“Are you cold?”

She nods.

He can feel the loss of contact like a physical ache when he picks his hand up, and he quickly gathers the blankets they’ve collected in the corner. He folds two over her lap, and holds the other one, hovering.

“Do you want to hold this one?”

She blinks her eyes open. They look a little hazy, and Roy can feel the fear and guilt poke between his shoulder blades. Her eyes find the blanket, and her hand comes off the chair. She reaches for it too quickly, and freezes. Her face pales. She groans, her eyes falling shut again.

Her hand, hovering between them, grasps.

Roy pushes the blanket into her open palm. She pulls her hand back, so he lets the blanket drop to his side. Her hand closes and opens a few more times.

She clearly wants something, but Roy isn’t sure what. His mind whirls. She doesn’t want the blanket. Was she reaching for him?

He doesn’t figure it out in time. He realizes that as she makes a choked noise, leans to the side, and vomits onto the floor.

The bucket. He’s such a dumbass.

His face burns as he fetches a rag. He waits for her to finish coughing before helping her right herself, carefully wiping around her mouth. She sniffles, her eyes opening as he pulls away. She looks at the bile on the floor, then at him.

“I missed,” she mumbles.

Was that a joke? From the way the very edges of her mouth have tilted up, he thinks it might be. He thinks it’s just for his benefit.

“Riza Hawkeye never misses.”

Her eyes find his, and the smile grows by a fraction. It falls when she shivers again.

Roy goes to give her the blanket, but the edge of it has gotten soaked in the bile. He drops it, shrugs off his jacket, and holds it out to her. She slowly hugs it against her chest as he kneels down and uses the blanket to wipe up the mess. He’s only out of the room for a minute, dumping the dirtied blanket in the sink and washing his hands, but his heart thuds unpleasantly the entire time. When he reenters the room with a glass of water, one of her hands has found the chair again. It looks like she’s using it to hold herself up.

She follows him with her gaze as he approaches with the glass. She blinks sluggishly when he holds it up, but tips her head forward. He raises it to her lips, and she takes a few small sips before she pulls away. She huffs out a heavy breath as he sets the glass down on the floor, tongue darting out to wet her lips.

Roy looks away, eyes finding first the window, then the wall. He pauses, looking at the fireplace.

“Do you want me to light a fire?”

Her eyes follow his to the wall, and she nods. He moves away, hovering in front of the fireplace. It already has wood in it. He could retrieve his gloves, and light it with a simple snap.

He swallows. The room smells like vomit and burnt tissue. Riza’s breath is shaky behind him.

Roy blinks a few times, but the sting in his eyes doesn’t go away. “I’ll be right back,” he mumbles.

He wipes his eyes when he gets into the kitchen, hands shaking as he fumbles around in the drawers searching for a pack of matches. He finds it in the drawer closest to the stove. He lets his hands fall heavy on the counter, trying to calm his ragged breathing.

“Get it together, Mustang.”

He watches a tear drop onto his shoe. He wipes his eyes a final time and goes back into the living room.

He angles his face away from Riza as he makes his way in front of the fireplace and drops to his knees. He rips the matchbook open, yanks out the first match, and strikes it against the book. The match breaks. He grinds his jaw. Riza’s teeth clatter behind him. He removes another match, slowly, and tries to hold his hand steady as he scrapes it along the rough patch.

The match lights. He holds it to the kindling, and it doesn’t take long for the fire to take. He closes his eyes as the warmth reaches his face, and Riza gives a sigh of relief.

He stands, and turns to face her.

“Are you ready for me to wrap it?”

She shoots a look at the pack of bandages sitting on the edge of the table and hums something that sounds like an affirmation.

He walks over, and his hands don’t fumble as he unwraps the bandages. He pours a little of the water from the glass onto a clean cloth, and circles around to the other side of the table.

He stops short. He can’t help squeezing his eyes shut.

“Sir?” Riza asks after a moment, voice weak.

He forces his eyes open. “Going to clean the blood off,” he says.

Her back is slick with red. The blood has soaked into the back of her pants, and Roy hopes she wore ones she didn’t like. They’re surely going to be ruined, though that’s probably the least of her concerns. He starts to wipe the blood off her lower back, the furthest part of her skin from the burns, but even that makes her hiss as her skin moves. The back of Roy’s mouth tastes foul as he swallows, and keeps dabbing at the blood. Wiping away the blood reveals the tattoo hidden underneath. He remembers seeing it for the first time. He’d been so hungry back then. For her father’s research, the secret to flame alchemy. If only he could’ve known just how much pain it would cause her. He would’ve spirited her away before her father could ever lay needle to her flesh.  

When the first rag is ruined, he grabs another.

“I have to clean the burns now,” he says. He tries not to sound as sympathetic as he feels. As guilty.

Riza’s shoulders clench, then relax. Her head bobs in a nod.

He pulls away as soon as the cloth touches her. The shout strangles in Riza’s throat.

“Stop,” she chokes out. “Stop.”

His voice is thick when he responds, “I have to clean away the blood.”

Her whole body moves with the force of her breathing, and for a second he thinks she might throw up again. The chair creaks as Riza wrings her hand on it.

“Okay.”

He rewets the cloth, and starts dabbing at the burns again. Her next breath spills out as a sob. He works as quickly as he can, but her body is shaking with the force of trying to hold back her tears by the time he finishes.

“I’m going to wrap it now,” Roy says, and he knows for a fact that she can tell he’s crying by the wet quality of his words.

She’s crying, too. Her shoulders tremor, and she sniffles harshly between each quick inhale. At his words, she makes a choked noise, but she nods.

If his heart wasn’t broken before, it is now. He tries not to let his hands shake as he unravels the bandages partway. He wants to tell her she’s doing well, but he’s not sure if that would be condescending. He wipes his cheeks with the back of his wrist before leaning around her, holding out the edge of the bandage. “Can you hold this for me?”

She takes it with clumsy fingers, dropping the jacket to her lap. At least she’s not shivering anymore.

“Thanks,” he says, quiet. He pulls the bandage around her, unraveling it a good length before pressing it against her wounds.

He flinches when she cries out. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry,” he says as he leans around her to wrap around her front again. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers as he loosely does another loop around her back.

Her sobs peter out when he’s finished. She coughs, body shaking, and he doesn’t know if it’s because of her crying, or nausea. She’s been sobbing hard enough to make herself sick. He ties off the bandage, and steps back to rub his sweating palms over his pants. The top half of her torso is loosely wrapped in crisp white. It hasn’t begun to bleed through anywhere yet.

He doesn’t want to circle around the table, and see her face red and wet with tears. He deserves to see it, but he doesn’t want to. He feels he should give her a little privacy. He thinks they’re past embarrassment, but still.

She wavers, and he’s around the table in a heartbeat.

He stops in front of her. Her face is indeed wet, pale but with blushed cheeks. She looks exhausted. She tilts slightly to the side, then rights herself.

Roy’s lip trembles, and he bites the inside of it. “I don’t think you should lie down yet,” he says, and her eyes blink open to look at him. “We need to keep it elevated as best we can.”

She nods, the tiniest movement.

His teeth’s grip on his lip grows harder, but he can’t stop the flood in his eyes.

She watches him, and then reaches out with one hand. This time, it’s clear she’s reaching for him. His hand takes her wrist, steadying her as she reaches up to his face. Her palm finds his cheek, fingers resting under his ear. Her thumb wipes away a tear just as it falls, and he closes his eyes as she rubs her thumb pad over the soft skin of his eyelid.

He would be self-conscious about anyone else doing that. He used to be insecure about his eyes. But once, when they were children, she’d mentioned how beautiful she found them. A casual, off-hand comment, not understanding the weight behind her words. He’d never told her how much that meant to him.

Her thumb skims his eyelashes, and then rests against his cheek. His eyes open.

Her lips draw up in a smile, though it looks like it takes great effort. “Didn’t feel a thing,” she says, fingers curling on his neck.

He huffs out a laugh, because he doesn’t want to keep crying.

Her smile grows a touch, but then her head wavers, her eyes close, and her hand drops to his shoulder.

His hand comes up to rest on hers. “Tired?”

She hums.

Her arms have little goosebumps on them. “Still cold?”

“Little bit,” she mumbles. “Shirt in my bag.”

He pats her hand, then steers it back to the chair. Her bag sits in the corner of the room, and he unzips it and digs through it until he finds the shirt.

His hands still as he pulls it out. It’s a white button-up. It looks a little rumpled, like it’s been worn before. A smile touches his lips. He looks at the tag. Men’s medium. There’s a little “RM” drawn on the tag in ink.

He’s been wondering where this went.

He stands, and crosses back to her.

“One arm at a time,” he says, unbuttoning the last button.

Her eyes remain closed as he steers one arm through the sleeve, and then the other. The shirt fits him, so it’s big on her. He rolls the sleeves up a few times so they don’t cover her hands. She braces herself on the table as he works on buttoning up the front, leaving the top few undone. When he’s done, his hands fall to his sides.

She says something, and he thinks it’s his name, but it’s so quiet that he doesn’t catch it. He leans closer to hear her better. Her hand rises and rests in the crook between his shoulder and his neck, steering him forward until their foreheads rest together.

Roy’s eyes close. Riza sighs. The breath ghosts over his lips and chin.

He places his hands on her sides, and presses closer. She’s warm against him.

He wants to tell her how much he cares about her. But something stops his tongue. Shame, maybe. Some little demon that dances over his heart, its claws digging into his soft flesh. He should tell her. He should’ve told her a thousand times over, when they were children, when he left for the military, when her father died, when they were in Ishval. He should’ve told her the day they got home. He didn’t. He’s such a coward.

She pulls away, just enough for her to tip forward to rest against his chest. He steps closer, one hand coming up to the back of her neck. She hums as his fingers comb through her short hair.

The fire crackles behind him. She needs the warmth, but the sound is doing something to his head. Making his heart clench and pulse, making his shoulders tighten. He knows the image is never going to leave his mind. Her flesh raw and bloodied by his hand. The sound of her shouts and sobs.

Riza yawns against his chest, and his muscles loosen by a fraction. He lightly scrapes his nails through the shortly cropped hairs on the back of her neck, and she leans more heavily against him.

He’ll have time to feel guilty later. To rage and hurt and mourn. But for now, the best thing he can do is hold her. If he’s too scared to tell her how much he cares, he’ll show her. That’s a promise he can keep.

 

Later, Riza will remember how completely and utterly painful it was. Aching, shooting, mind-searing pain. A pain that won’t leave her for weeks, a pain she’ll remember for decades. The kind that settles between your bones and makes its home there.

Later, Riza will remember Roy’s fingers carding through her hair. His nose pressed against her head. His chest warm against her. She’ll remember him holding her upright so long she knows his legs must ache.

Later, Riza will remember twisting to look in the mirror. Even that motion sends her into spasms of pain, but she needs to see. They’re between changing bandages, and she’s already lightheaded. But she’ll stare in the mirror, at the horrific state of her flesh, at the red and black and white of it, and she’ll smile.

Riza remembers finally being free.


End file.
